Blood Sacrifice
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Everything in this world has an equal price.


**Title: **Blood Sacrifice  
**Universe:** XXXHolic  
**Theme/Topic: **Reversal  
**Rating:** PG  
**Character/Pairing/s:** lightly, vaguely DoumekixWatanuki  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** A few minor spoilers for um, Vol 7, I think it was?  
**Word Count:** 705  
**Summary:** Everything in this world has an equal price.  
**Dedication:** for cheloya's holiday gift fic request! **  
A/N:** Yay, first holiday fic DONE! Now just um… 16 more to go? XD  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

The only time Watanuki is sweet to him is when he's bleeding.

Which, to Doumeki, seems kind of unfair, given the fact that when he's bleeding he's usually too a- lightheaded, b- unconscious, c- in pain, or d- all of the above, to properly appreciate it.

It kind of feels like a waste. Not just of Shizuka's blood, but also of those rare and precious moments where Watanuki actually shuts up for a little while and becomes a reasonable, semi-respectable human being. Sweet.

When Doumeki is bleeding, Watanuki is exactly the opposite of how he usually is (kind of annoying) under normal circumstances. Instead, during those rare and precious moments, he'll be looking at Doumeki with his brow knit in concern rather than exasperation, will use his hands to put pressure on the wound as best he can while his fingers tremble and his breaths come shallow. Sweat will bead on his neck and forehead, and he'll lick his bottom lip nervously in lieu of saying anything, will look at Doumeki with the kind of expression that says everything important in the whole world, everything that means even more than that. Doumeki remembers how once, Watanuki even took off his uniform jacket and pressed it to the hole in Shizuka's shoulder until the bleeding slowed, and how, during the following morning on the way to school, the loudmouth hadn't even complained once about having his clothes dirtied or didn't say anything about the fact that he'd had to scrub his jacket for hours into the night just to get it clean enough for the following school day.

Just because Doumeki had gotten hurt.

Everything is sweet and gentle like that for a little while after Doumeki bleeds, and it's only in those moments that he knows—despite his lightheadedness— what's real and what's not, knows that those frantic, frenzied shrieks of "I HATE YOU DOUMEKI!" he hears on a daily basis during lunchtime don't actually mean anything in the long run.

They can't be real when he can see Watanuki's furrowed brow like it is now, when he can feel trembling hands pressing against him and hear the hiss of worried, shallow breaths.

Everything important and wonderful in the world is there like that for him in those moments; all it takes is his blood for those truths to come out. And while part of Shizuka wants to resent the fact that he needs to go that far just to get an ounce of honesty from Watanuki, a bigger part of Doumeki already knows that it's pointless to hold a grudge like that because there is nothing in this world worth having that comes for free.

For everything we take and everything we receive in this life, an equal price must be paid.

So he pays Watanuki an ounce of blood for every one moment of that beautiful, naked honesty he gets from the other boy, and while sometimes it doesn't seem quite fair, Shizuka knows it is in the end simply because it cannot be anything but.

When Doumeki is injured, Watanuki pays for it in a quiet breath of realization— there and gone again in a moment, but undeniably _there_.

"Does it hurt?" Watanuki asks this time, small beads of sweat gathered on his forehead and the side of his neck as he wraps the cut on Doumeki's arm from earlier tonight— the one he'd gotten from another creature that made Kimihiro frightened enough that Doumeki could see it, from another moment of blind panic where all Doumeki could see was Watanuki anyway.

"It doesn't hurt," he answers, truthfully.

Watanuki's hands tremble and he feels every second of it.

"Does it hurt for you?" Doumeki asks in return, and feels a little bit lightheaded.

Watanuki's brow knits at that, like he doesn't understand the words that are coming out of Doumeki's mouth just as much as he doesn't understand the blood coming out of his body.

A moment of naked honesty.

"I'm okay," Watanuki tells him, and licks his bottom lip.

Doumeki smiles a little. "Okay."

He's a little bit lightheaded—maybe from the blood loss, maybe not—but he thinks that for moments like those, it's a price he's willing to pay.

**END**


End file.
